Cenk Uygur: America is ‘sick in the head with guns’

Friday night on Current TV’s “The Young Turks,” host Cenk Uygur charged that there’s one party in the Trayvon Martin slaying that is truly, undeniably guilty, but it isn’t a person.

“Guns are the real problem,” he said.

Rolling recently released store camera video of 17-year-old Martin buying a pack of Skittles candy and an Arizona Iced Tea just moments before he encountered Zimmerman and was fatally shot, Uygur said, “That kid that you just saw — he’s 17 years old — he would be alive today if George Zimmerman didn’t have a gun.”

“We’ve turned our country into the O.K. Corral,” Uygur said, “We’re sick with it, sick in the head with guns.”

The host blames gun manufacturers and their powerful lobbying group, the National Rifle Association (NRA). “I know, I know — progressives aren’t supposed to fight back on this. Nobody’s supposed to fight back — we’re just supposed to lie down and say, ‘okay, NRA… I know you represent the gun manufacturers and then get rich off of all those people dying.’ And you use all your fancy arguments and you’ve already bought all the politicians… But someone’s gonna stand up to you and it’s gonna happen right here. You don’t like it, that’s too bad.”

About the Author

David Ferguson is an editor at Raw Story. He was previously writer and radio producer in Athens, Georgia, hosting two shows for Georgia Public Broadcasting and blogging at Firedoglake.com and elsewhere. He is currently working on a book.